


LaFontaine's Story

by Aizazadi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Gen, Major Character Undeath Without Zombies, Or vampires, Other, Plot Twists, Plotty, Pre-Canon, Science, Science Fiction, Somewhat Intellectual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 11,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9304136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aizazadi/pseuds/Aizazadi
Summary: Plot-driven brain-burner of mass criticism-attraction.LaFontaine admires Kaitlyn Alexander's acting, kills a serial murderer Sherlock-ish, and constructs a world in their head using the web series, with the help of Carmilla.





	1. Introductory Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is probably the only one of its kind.  
> English is not my first language.  
> You should read it.

Kaitlyn Alexander is not of this world.  
She is literally not of this world.  
Hang on.  
The character, S.LaFontaine’s non-binary status is more or less irrelevant to the story. The actor is brilliant and tangibly at home in this role. Add that to the uncanny, almost poetic resemblance between that fiction and this reality, this would imply that the actor, Kaitlyn Alexander, is probably also non-binary.  
Like me.  
This was what was going through the head of one Susan LaFontaine, immediately after they watched the finale of Carmilla.


	2. virtual Reality-Construction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LaF has a bit of a think.

Rotating away from the desk in this dimly lit chamber high above the earth, LaFontaine noticed their intuition.  
I instinctively called them “she” instead of “they”. That was my intuition.  
On one hand, LaFontaine was quietly proud of that, because that had demonstrated that they were not making assumptions. After all the trials and tribulations I went through the past decade, I’m glad I learnt that much. Intuitive assumptions tend to be wrong more often than you intuitively assume, so stick to the knowns and the defaults until you reason your way to the conclusion. On the other hand, they are aware of what this means: that they were still not able to cooperate reason into their intuition. Although the default assumption, the recognition of that default assumption, the reasoning to find other alternatives, the assignment of rough estimates of probabilities, the engineering of an approximate numerical evaluation method, the assessment of the likely alternative, and the correction of the initial assumption took less than five seconds in total, they were still aware that the whole thing had been methodical and rational, albeit very smoothly so. But not intuitive.  
The logical process to analyse everything is the curse of the genius.  
Those processes not being intuition is the curse of emotions.  
Wouldn’t have it any other way.  
Also… After so many times watching the show, I finally am relaxed enough to contemplate the actors.  
Weird, considering this is far and away the biggest moment of my life, the moment I ought to feel scared to death in.  
OK, enough philosophising, decided Susan LaFontaine. Back to the task at hand. One more hour and I can rest in heaven.  
Geniuses have many gifts, one of them is being able to take in, compute and coordinate vast amounts of information at a supercomputerish speed. This is what LaFontaine was doing now. They closed their eyes, and saw the entirety of Carmilla flash past their eyes, in exact, impeccable detail, and at around fifty times the speed. Every moment, every line, every prop, every actor’s every expression, every artistic composition of every moving image, where the actors stood, where they were supposed to stand, every time the empty TARDIS mug was lifted, every “cupcake” issued out of Negovanlis’ lips, every utterance of “the bio major”, every “bro” and every “normal”, every sentence that starts with “between”, were all speeding past LaFontaine’s cerebral video player.  
The replay finished. They remembered every last detail.  
Time to delete. All props and details that did not change throughout the story, keep one copy and discard the rest. The ridiculous clue board, the “this is a good sign”, the fake sword, the piles of books. All information about all characters that can be reconstructed reasonably closely from other information, keeping a brief outline and delete. Wardrobe, non-critical dialogue, gadgets. All comedic or dramatic moment not vastly important to the story that will not go unchecked in real life, replace with something a little less conspicuous. The Silas News broadcasts, the multiple choice card, the sock puppet shows, the Dean needing to take any effort at all in obtaining the book from Laura, the Latin, the impeccable camera work of Kirsch, Vordenberg’s personality. Unexamined assumptions. All personalities, all implicit facts, Mattie’s death, the existence of any god whatsoever, the existence of the Dean, the existence of JP. Trivialities. The sweat patches, the mystery yellow pillow, special effects, actor slips.  
And so on.  
Five minutes later, this part of the work is complete. In LaFontaine’s mind is only a DNA of the story.  
Proceed.  
One assumption. The story is coherent, and can remain so after reconstruction, such that it will pass a realistic common sense check.  
Construct. The deduction of personalities from exchanges of action and dialogue. Mannerisms. The construction of the outside world using the real world as a model, modified wherever it contradicts the setting of the show. The Dean is real. The death goddess exists, and will no longer interfere. The show’s general mythological backdrop, including the existence of vampires, and apparently conscious AIs, is true. Silas is crawling with supernatural powers. Mattie is dead. Danny has disappeared into the world. JP is apparently destroyed. I am missing an eye. Perry is back. Carmilla is now human.  
Devolve. Given the happy ending of the show, my goal is to push the time arrow backwards to find a suitable beginning point that, given a scaled down version of my intelligence and all realistic personalities involved, will reliably realistically lead to that end point… The beginning of the show works.  
Done. An Earth spins in LaFontaine’s mind.  
They focused on one corner of this gigantic world, the lens adjusting and readjusting to peek into the details of one tiny country, at one peculiar university, in one ordinary dorm room, through one insignificant camera, to one painstakingly familiar voice:  
“Silas University in picturesque Styria, where nothing, not even the homecoming goat sacrifice disturbs the pursuit of knowledge—”  
Suddenly, LaFontaine opened their eyes.  
There is a world in my head.


	3. Rampage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LaF has a bit less of a think.

Having completed the task of mental world construction, LaFontaine now shifted their attention again to the computer. Blindingly quickly, they began to type out line after line of code in an unknown programming language.  
This job does not take as much focus and effort as the one before, so LaFontaine could afford to let their mind wander off:  
Silas is crawling with supernatural powers. Mattie is dead. Danny has disappeared into the world. JP is apparently destroyed. I am missing an eye. Perry is back. Carmilla is now human. That was what I reconstructed, which corresponds pretty well to reality, where Danny has indeed apparently disappeared, I am missing my left eye, Perry is human, and Carmilla is human.  
And Carmilla is dead.  
And Perry is dead. Laura is dead. Danny is dead. Larua’s dad is dead. Kirsch, Mel, Theo, Mattie, JP…  
None left alive.  
All killed by one person.  
Me.  
I am the sole survivor.  
Love will have its sacrifices.


	4. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LaF goes a bit Sherlock Holmes.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Susan LaFontaine was born a genius. When the “they” was still a “she”, LaFontaine was always the cleverest person in any group she cared to be found in. Blasting her way through school, she was a university student at the age of 9, and succeeded in obtaining a doctorate in Biology in one and a half years flat. Then Physics. Then Neuroscience. Then Computing. Then Astrophysics. Then she turned 18, and they would finally let her get her hands on the not-for-children equipment in Engineering, when she knocked out aerospace, electrical, mechanical and mechatronics all in the space of five years. She declined newspapers and interviews all, turned down investors and research offers alike, out of one simple reason: disinterest.

Future historians, if such people were possible, would have pinned her achievements during these years down to issues of identity, isolation and general desperation. They would look at her hellish family environment and the stereotypical amount of bullying subjected at a genius and, without further research of confirmation, assume that she was the typical, the prototypical genius: lonely, misunderstood, pretending indifference. They would not bother to dig deep enough to find her daily routine, her teaching classmates who were often 10 years her senior, her academic exchanges with demonstrators and professors, her numerous dating attempts.

Neither would they find Lola Perry.

Lola Perry, whose preferred form of address was Lola, was a fifth grader when LaFontaine was in that same fifth grade. This made her six years older, which she always tried to forget whenever she heard about what other degrees Susan had completed. She kept regular correspondence with LaFontaine through the following years, until her own graduation at the ripe normal age of 18. Not blessed with LaFontaine’s string of famous universities, she barely made it into a language studies degree in a mysterious institute abroad, called Silas University, where she stayed for the next five years for a Master’s degree, until LaFontaine decided to join her, keeping her enrolment in online courses to complete her three remaining Masters and one Doctorate.

Silas is where everything changed. For a start, LaFontaine discovered their identity. Obviously, as someone who had known them since they were five, Lola did not get used to them not answering to “Susan” for a while, prompting LaFontaine to start calling her “Perry”, which became her preferred form of address.

For another, they met the oddest couple: Laura Hollis, a first year journalism student, and Carmilla Karnstein, a final year student studying the perfect broody combination: Philosophy and Psychology. It is generally understood that they became lovers over a misunderstanding involving the image of a giant black cat, which turned out to be a really close image of a small black cat, which the pet store next door took back the next day. It appeared to LaFontaine, whose brain was then always occupied by electrodynamics and biological information pathways, that Carmilla was the best pastry chef in the university, with her constant talk of cupcakes and creampuffs. It also appeared to them that Laura was a private investigator, keen to get involved in whatever minor mysteries there were on campus. Not that she avoided major mysteries, there were no major mysteries. Silas, for all its reputation, proved to be a pretty normal place, to Perry’s taste.

That is, until the missing girls. Three girls went missing during the course of five weeks, with their dead bodies turning up in creeks, valleys and groves, each one viciously assaulted, raped and killed. LaFontaine strained away from the investigations at first, but frustrated at seeing the police not make any progress in the case, they went to the police station to volunteer their services, where a thirty-something inspector politely refused them, spelling out letter by letter what “police investigation” means. Fed up, LaFontaine started their own investigation, much to Perry’s horror. Together with Laura, they inspected, researched and interviewed, whereupon the met Danny Lawrence, a TA trying to do the same thing. Compiling their information, LaFontaine quickly deduced the killer’s identity: Professor Orville, of the Astrophysics Department at the university. Unbeknownst to the team, LaFontaine went after him.

 

One beautiful afternoon in May.

“What are you planning to do once you figure out who it is any way?” Asked Lola Perry into the phone, as she walked briskly along a corridor, “you know that you can’t go back to the police, right?”

“Of course I can’t, Perr. Um… You know I already know who it is, right?”

“What? No! How… Who is it?”

“Um, is this channel secure?”

“Wha… Secure?”

“You know, on the off chan…” LaFontaine’s voice trailed off, “On second thoughts, absolutely no reason to think anyone’s listening. Alright. It’s the astrophysics professor. And I have proof. Lots of it.”

“LaF…” Perry lowered her voice, “You probably should call the police.”

“But I can’t, you just said. They won’t take me seriously.”

“Come on, you know they’ll have to after seeing your proof.”

Pause.

“OK, that was badly thought out.” LaFontaine’s voice declared, through the phone, a sigh,

“I can’t go to the police because of what I plan to do.”

“What?” Perry’s voice grew even more urgent, lowered right down to a whisper, “What are you talking about?”

Deviating from her daily routine, Perry took the shortcut across the courtyard.

“Perry… You know I can always trust you, right? I can, and always have, told you the truth. In everything.”

“Yes.” Perry replied, “Because I can always see things your way, I always understand you, and I’m very grateful that you feel that way, that you do trust me like that. So please tell me what you meant by what you were planning to do?”

Silence.

Perry’s breath was audible through the phone as she hurried towards to dorm.

“I’m going to kill him.”

Perry broke into a run.

“Listen, Perry. I know you don’t understand, but listen to me. I have done thorough research on Orville’s life and crime, and he should die, to prevent more girls from falling into his hands. I have two options here, going to the police or taking my own action. If I go to the police, it’s a pretty sure call that he would be detained and questioned, then arrested, put through the Styria justice system and prosecuted, but you can’t be sure of all that, there is the possibility of things going wrong at every link of the chain. The police might not listen to me, and by the time I come up with a way to make them, he might have killed another girl; he is a distinguished scientist, so it’s very possible he has some very powerful connections who will reduce his sentence, or even secretly free him; he has been clever enough to fool the police once, it might not be beyond him to fool them twice, and if he does I will be the first to die; his defence team might be able to put together reasonable doubt, or even if not, what appears to be reasonable doubt, you have to assume that faking evidence is not below them; and given your average jury, I am definitely not certain that he will be convicted. If he becomes free at all, he will come after me. And what’s the best possible outcome of this? Execution, which I can do myself. That’s my second option. If I carry out the punishment myself, there is only one way that I can be sure of him not hurting me or anyone else: killing him. Yes, you might think it’s morally wrong, you are probably worried that I’d get caught doing it, you are definitely worried that I might go crazy afterwards, but trust me, I have calculated the possible outcomes of every scenario, and this is the best one. By far. You and I both know that there is no one more suitable to make this call, certainly not your average jury.”

“Susan,” Perry’s voice broke out, out of breath, “Please, Susan, stay in the dorm and don’t act on impulse. Please.”

“But I am not acting on impulse! I told you the reason why I’m doing this, it’s a researched and calculated decision! I…”

“I’m at the door now. Let’s talk about it.”

“No, Per—”

Hanging up the phone, Perry grabs her key to the dorm door.


	5. Murder, Bloody Murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura goes a bit Dr. Watson.

Naturally enough, she walked in on LaFontaine, standing beside the body of the astrophysics professor, syringe in hand.

Instantly she froze, holding on to the door handle, with frightened eyes and gaping mouth.

—La…

—Perry. Well I guess I just have the bad luck.

—Wh…

—Come on! Come on! GET IN!

Perry stayed frozen.

With a sigh somewhere between urgency and impatience, LaFontaine jumped over the body of the professor, jerking Perry into the room, yanking out her keys, and slammed closed the door, hurriedly turning their own keys on the inside.

Stumbling, Perry managed to avoid crashing into the professor’s body, and looked back at LaFontaine.

—Is he… Dead?

LaFontaine nodded.

Perry’s mouth slowly opened.

LaFontaine made a calming hand gesture.

Perry was not calmed.

LaFontaine made a “don’t let people hear you scream with a dead body in the room” hand gesture.

Perry indicated that she had received the message. She also indicated she was about to faint.

LaFontaine searched underneath their bed. They emerged with a small white can attached with a mask, and put it on Perry’s face and sat her onto the bed.

—Breath.

—What…

—Portable oxygen. My old BioEng project.

And so Perry breathed. She also indicated that LaF start talking.

LaFontaine stepped over the body once again, and sat down on their own bed. Hunched, with elbows propping on legs and fingers crossing, they looked up at Perry.

—Well, I was hoping you wouldn’t come back this early, didn’t want you to get into the mess. The less you know the better, you know. I know I told you I planned on killing him, but you know yourself you would have ignored me, even when the professor disappeared. Although I did fake him a holiday, so nobody would notice him disappearing.

—Oh, LaF…

Closing her eyes, Perry fell into silence, her breathing sounds piercing the rumbling university noise from the outside. LaFontaine, taking a deep breath, shifts their gaze between her eyes and their knuckles. A moment passes by.

Taking off her mask, Perry suddenly spoke.

—What about when the holiday ends?

LaFontaine let out a deep breath.

—Well… We don’t have to worry about that.

—Why not?

LaFontaine smiled. It was the smile they’d give Perry when she asked about their latest scientific project she had no hope of understanding.

—What-eh-what about the body then?

—Well, since you know I did it already… I’m going to stuff him into the fridge in his own flat.

—Won’t the electricity company notice the bill?

—No such nosey company. The fridge being on while you’re away on holiday is plausible anyway.

—What about when he’s supposed to come back?

The same smile.

—We don’t need to worry about that.

Perry pondered.

—Is this another secret thing? Do you have a second layer to your plan that you don’t want me to reveal to the police if I get questioned so you’re not telling me?

One more time, the smile.

—Something like that, yeah.

LaFontaine said.

—Okay… When should we start moving the body then?

—No. I’ll do it myself, I have a whole plan. You need to leave. After you leave I’ll wait a while and then start the plan.

Nodding, Perry leaned forward.

—LaF, you’re my best friend, and you’re the cleverest person I’ve ever known. I want you to know that I believe everything you’ve told me, and I will keep the secret. And it wouldn’t be you if you haven’t covered all the angles and came up with the best plan. I just want to know, are you doing it to save more girls, like you told me over the phone?

A firm nod.

—Yes. He was planning on killing another just then.

Perry nodded.

—I take it the police will never discover him?

Another nod.

—So to everyone else, the crimes will stop but the criminal will never be caught?

A third nod.

—Then don’t we have to worry about copycats?

The same smile again showed from LaFontaine, this time tinged with pride for Perry.

—We don’t have to worry about that. They won’t have enough time.

Recognising the smile, Perry stood up and straightened up.

—Well, I’ll leave then. Be caref…

Knock.

The door swung inwards at the single knock.

Grabbing sounds. The knocker seemed embarrassed, clutching the doorknob to prevent it from opening without being answered. A curious sound from the keyhole area.

Slowly, the door opened, revealing an embarrassed Laura Hollis, holding in her right hand a loose doorknob.

—I’m sorry, I heard your door slam really loudly, I didn’t mean… IS THAT ORVILLE?!

She ejaculated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't get the chapter summary, know that in the original stories, one of the most commonly used verbs is "to ejaculate", as in: "Holmes, that is brilliant!" Watson ejaculated.


	6. Improbable Impossibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Impossibility is improbable. So is clear thinking. And LaF. And Carmilla.

Some situations are genuinely impossible. People who enjoy sensational fiction too often encounter some character somehow finding a way out of a seemingly impossible situation. They, and others, are too often led to believe that “nothing is impossible” and that “impossible is nothing” by various sensation-raising people or profit-making entities. The obviously correct is too often overcome by the thousand times repeated. The truth, though, is much simpler. Impossible is impossible. No matter if it is an awe-inspiring speech, or a carefully laid program, any situation that can be recovered from cannot be appropriately termed “impossible”, they are “improbable” at best.

Some situations, on the other hand, are genuinely impossible. Some problems have so many parameters and constraints that they can’t be perfectly satisfied no matter how hard you try. Some risks you just cannot eliminate, some eventualities you just cannot account for, some obvious flaws you’ll just have to run with, no matter how much of a genius you are.

This was the situation LaFontaine was facing.

More precisely, this was the situation LaFontaine was facing three hours ago.

Problem: Orville will kill tonight. Prevent this.

Constraints and implications:

  * The event MUST be prevented. Distractions, social obligations and other ways of creating inconvenient circumstances are not guaranteed to be effective. Direct intervention is required.
  * Time is short. The attack will likely occur in 3 or 4 hours, there is very little time to prepare or decide on anything. The plan must be simple and uncumbersome.
  * The police must not be involved. Arresting him poses a potential, unchecked future threat to many people.
  * He must not be in a position to act against me after tonight. Either he is not alarmed to my existence, or he is permanently physically and mentally disabled.
  * My actions must go completely unobserved. After his crimes, the university, and the police, must be assumed to notice and investigate all abnormalities.
  * …



It wasn’t long before LaFontaine realised that they had to kill him. It took slightly longer for them to realise that it was impossible to cover all angles and remain completely safe. There were cameras and colleagues around his office. He was not going back to his flat for that night. He was going to be in public until right before the crime, when he will retreat to a corner in the university where LaFontaine has no hope of outmanoeuvring him. There was no place for the murder, unless they bait him into going somewhere else first. Where? The uni is filled with people and cameras: buildings, walkways, entrances and exits. Hacking into the security system for cameras sets off an alarm, getting security and the police involved. So where? Time is short. The only places without cameras, off the top of their head, was toilets, where anyone could come barging in; his crime scenes, where he will definitely be alarmed to go to; and… the dorms.

It has to be LaFontaine’s own dorm room. The only place where they can set up for a murder without suspicion; the only place where they, for sure, have the upper hand. The risk of Perry coming back, the risk of people knocking on the door, the risk of Orville not following instructions… Will just have to be tolerated. Plus, there is not much time for repercussions anyway…

Now, how to get him here…

 

Of course, even if a lot of these risks can’t be entirely eliminated, LaFontaine had thought of backup plans to deal with them if they arose.

Killing Orville should only take a short time, so don’t have to worry about anyone charging in during the act.

If Perry comes in, talk to her. She can be persuaded.

If someone knocks, ignore them and hide the body, then get them out as soon as possible.

If someone sees the body…

Nothing. If someone other than Perry sees the body, or realises that I killed Orville, the game is up. I’ll have to assess the situation and see if it’s possible to stop them from talking, and what lengths I have to go to do that, and if it’s worth it.

This was the one point where LaFontaine just failed. It’s impossible to eliminate all risk, they knew, but they had some sort of backup plan for every eventuality, although most of them were wild shots that most likely won’t work. But this one, they could think of nothing for this one.

So as LaFontaine went through the motions of baiting Orville to the dorm and preparing to kill him, they thought intensely, but fruitlessly, at the problem.

Until right this moment.

Laura holding on to the fallen handle, her expression a silent scream.

LaFontaine suddenly realised.

I went at this the wrong way. There is nothing I can do, really, save preventing them from talking for a couple of minutes, delaying them from leaving my sight and spreading the news. I don’t have the ability to talk down anyone that’s not Perry.

But somebody else does.

There is one person I know, that would walk into the room and immediately understand the situation, see the sensible solution, and persuade almost anyone to stay silent. She would see things in a different way, talk with a completely different logic. She understands people, and can appeal to them in a way I can never understand. In a way I can’t even precisely remember.

Staring into the horror-filled face of Laura Hollis, Susan LaFontaine came to an epiphany.

If someone sees the body, call Carmilla.


	7. Karnstein

The Laura Crisis, as later dubbed by LaFontaine’s overactive mind, proved much less difficult than they previously thought. Laura seemed, contrary to LaFontaine’s assumption of people, somewhat capable of rationality under crazy circumstances. Even with her melting brain, she actually listened and understood. She understood that Professor Orville had to be stopped, she understood that the police cannot be involved, she even understood that the was no other way out. LaFontaine, whose life so far had been filled by constant boiling frustration in struggling to get people to listen to their rational and scientific analysis of all issues, was greatly impressed. They just weren’t sure who by.

For Carmilla did all the explaining.

Laura often told LaFontaine that Carmilla had this knack, it’s like she could see into your soul, and no, that wasn’t the relationship talking. Carmilla could walk into the room and tell you what you’re feeling, and why you’re feeling that way. It’s no Sherlockish deduction, she just seemed to know it. Then she could tell you if you should feel like that, cheer you up if you’re feeling down, or quietly lay you down if you’re overexcited, or, Laura admitted with an embarrassed grin, it’s quite the seduction tool as well. She had lost count the number of times she lay in bed, her head in Carmilla’s lap, upset by the university, or life, or Carmilla’s impending graduation, when Carm would, stroking Laura’s hair, talk about her head and her heart, talk about the sense and nonsense of life and the universe, the glaring and stubborn beauty of humans, of the Earth, of evolution and extinction, of time and the cosmos, of the spectacular insignificance and irrelevance of everything there ever was, of love.

And it's such a cliché that they would kiss, or lock the door.

LaFontaine took this to mean that Carmilla, out of some past event, or life experience in general, subconsciously kept tabs on everyone she knows. She instinctively observes, deduces and arranges people’s emotional states in the same way LaFontaine themselves instinctively tries to scientifically explain every natural phenomenon they encounter. Knowing this, LaFontaine felt they had every reason to believe Carmilla would be able to calm Laura down.

And they were not disappointed.

Upon receiving LaFontaine’s text, Carmilla came swooping into the room, rushed to Laura’s side. Within a few moments, Laura, nodding, seemed to completely understand the situation.

There was, then, nothing more to be said.

Perry sat on her bed, eyes fervently avoiding the body on the floor; Laura sat on the other bed, her face in her hands; Carmilla had her arm around Laura, eyes staring straight at LaFontaine, who stood by the door, back pushing it firmly shut.

The room sat uncomfortably in complete silence.

“So,” LaFontaine finally spoke, “I kinda need to get rid of the body and clean the room a little…?”

Perry, silently, got up and got out.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” Said Laura, who stood up and looked at LaFontaine with a complex expression of helplessness and compassion, then looked at Carmilla inquiringly.

Carmilla’s face was desolate.

“I’ll meet you in the dorm in five minutes.” She said to Laura.

 

Once certain that Perry and Laura were out of earshot, Carmilla turned to LaFontaine.

“I hope you're as clever as they say you are.”

LaFontaine raised an eyebrow.

Carmilla shook her head resignedly.

“Copycats.”

“Oh,” LaFontaine said in surprise, “That! Eh… I, I…”

“No!” Carmilla proclaimed, standing up, “you must have thought of it. You’re clever enough to trick a serial rapist and killer into an extremely suspicious place on the eve of his crime, you must have thought of a simple problem like that! Now that he’s never going to be caught, copycats are bound to turn up! More people will get hurt than he will ever hurt. If your motive was to prevent him from killing girls, then…”

She took a step back, realisation dawning on her face. Then fear.

“No…”

Aghast, LaFontaine raised a hand.

“No!” They turreted in disbelief, “I’m not some maniac mastermind pervert who’s killed someone to take the fall, then pausing for a moment before recommencing and blaming copycats!”

“You sure seem to have a pretty good idea of what you’re not.”

“I…” LaFontaine threw up both hands, “I don’t have an ulterior motive, I just know that no one will have the time to become a copycat. Here, I’ll show you proof.”

LaFontaine took an USB stick from a trouser pocket and plugged it into their laptop on the desk.

“Some data I got from breaking into Orville’s office last night. This told me that he was going to kill again tonight. Also…”

Opening a particular file, LaFontaine indicated at the density of numbers on the screen.

“Look at this. Trajectory calculation of asteroids in the solar system. This one.”

Carmilla bent down to see. Almost immediately, she gasped in horror.

“Yeah.” LaFontaine nodded with a sigh, “the end of the world.”


	8. State Visit (Waterdrop)

The door slid open.

“Miss LaFontaine?”

LaF didn’t feel the need to correct the man. They stood up.

“Yes?”

“Hello, my name is David Hadley. I’m from the UN.” Speaking with an English accent, he showed an ID card.

“Yes. Hello.”

Handshake. At LaFontaine’s invitation, both sat down at a small coffee table LaF set up especially for this meeting.

“Expecting me?” Hadley asked softly, looking around the narrow spaces between their seats and the beds.

“For a while now.” LaFontaine confirmed, “the UN, or NASA, or the EU, Russia, Japan, China, Elon Musk… One of them is bound to send for me.”

“Quite.” Hadley smiled, “And they all would have, if the UN were not coordinating the whole effort. The survival of the human race is beyond any nations, you see.”

“Ah.” Adjusting their wrist watch, LaFontaine uttered a surprised syllable, “Governments are more effective than I realised.”

“Before we get down to the actual issue,” Hadley took a folder labelled “S. LaFontaine” from a sealed envelope in his briefcase, “would you mind me asking how you came by the information?”

LaFontaine smiled the “of course not” smile.

“Murder, bloody murder.”

Hadley chuckled. He pushed the folder across to LaFontaine.

“Well,” he said, “as I’m sure you are aware, about three weeks ago, we detected a new asteroid, 10296, since named ‘Inanna’, heading towards the position of the Earth in six months’ time. It will crash into the Earth on the evening of the 12th of December, Greenwich time. We estimate that its impact will destroy nearly all manmade structures, causing all terrestrial organisms to burn, as well as other natural disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. As a result, the entire human race, as well as many species of large animals and plants, will be wiped out in their entireties. In other words…”

“In other words, we are the dinosaurs.”

Hadley nodded.

“Since its first observation, governments across the globe have been looking into plans of prevention and escape. Prevention was unrealistic, so this folder here details our final plan of escape.”

LaFontaine flipped the folder open. A large United Nations emblem, and the red stamp “STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL” jumped out at them. Hadley resumed:

“After exhaustive confirmation of the news, nearly every nation emptied out its secret research and technologies, as well as sharing all resources with the UN. However, as you can imagine, we still have neither the time nor the resources to save the entire human race, or even a portion of it. Our best capabilities stop at spaceflight with fifty people for a few years. We therefore decided to build such a spaceship, and set sail for Mars.”

The folder seemed an ordinary black folder, with plastic sleeves holding individual sheets. Each sheet had the giant watermark “S. LaFontaine” across the entire page, and the information contained in each sheet was highly personalised. One sheet held the introduction to the disaster ahead, the next an outline as to the steps taken by various governments and the UN, after which were explanations of the political arrangement concerning the disaster, then a brief analysis of options, followed by an outline of the final plan, as Hadley was explaining now:

“We are still uncertain whether we could survive on Mars, or indeed survive the trip, but this does seem the only operable option. Out of the fifty passengers, thirty-three will be crew, leaving seventeen spots for people needed for the species’ survival on Mars. Most of these are scientists and engineers in the aerospace, mechanical, electrical, mechatronical, biological and areological fields, as well as several doctors and psychologists.

“Another team of similar programmers and engineers from various nations and organisations will move into the few nuclear bunkers on Earth predicted to survive the impact, and guide the spacecraft as ground control, using equipment we are currently building. They too, if at all possible, will re-emerge from the bunkers to attempt rehabilitating the Earth after the impact.

“Because of your expertise in nearly all of the fields mentioned above, and your clear capabilities for a lot more, the UN has sent me to invite you to board the spacecraft to Mars.”

LaFontaine froze. They were flipping through the final pages of the document. A list of selection criteria and why they apply, including mental abilities, health and young age; a list of allowables onto the spacecraft, with strict checks and protocols; a list of equipment abroad the spacecraft, with some room for suggested improvements; a list of duties as a Martian, including compulsory procreation; a form of acceptance; a photo.

The photo was on the very last page of the folder. Unlike all the other documents, it was not watermarked, instead, in the top-right corner, a scrappy hand wrote in blue “ _MUCAR???”._ It depicted a familiar group of people in an unfamiliar setting. A castle-styled half-room filled with two large, antique armchairs, and a table, upon which is a board game slightly resembling checkers, and three drink-holders of vastly different styles. Laura, in a cartoon-ish owl sweater, sits in one chair. LaFontaine, with flaming hair and in nightshirts, sits in the other. Directly behind LaF stands Danny, and behind Laura, Carmilla. Perry, also in her nighties, stands between them, with the gap between her to Danny on one side and Carmilla on the other filled with three more unknown characters, two men and one woman. All had fairly open gestures, except for Carmilla, who looked her broody, disinterested self.

LaFontaine’s eyes widened.

As if in slow motion, LaFontaine looked up, with a vast, vacant expression that slowly crawled with revelation, shock and epiphany.

Hadley smiled. He had encountered this too often, surprise at receiving the invitation. This is usually followed by incredulous questions of “huh? Me?” and a quick acceptance of the proposal. Many self-branded geniuses feel the responsibility to protect the human race, or the superiority to survive it. So David Hadley waited patiently, looking around the room, while LaFontaine seemed to process something intensely, eyes closed, forehead on the back of their hands folded together and bridged out above the folder.

Extremely slowly, LaFontaine closed the file.

With that same vacant expression, they finally spoke.

“How many escape methods have you considered?”

Clearly not expecting this question, Hadley stammered.

“Um… More than a handful general approaches?”

“Generally very novel approaches?”

“Well, a novel problem requires a novel solution. We looked at large underground and underwater bunkers, brief space refuge before returning to Earth, embryo refrigeration, even time travel and saving the human DNA sequence and brain and bodily information for a future civilisation to revitalise…”

“What about the multiverse interpretation? Did anyone of importance suggest a possibility there? Or at least claimed the existence of the multiverse?”

“Well…” Hadley hesitated, thinking about classified information.

“So yes.” LaFontaine snapped, “Did they have proof?”

Hadley again hesitated.

“So not really.” LaFontaine said, staring at Hadley’s expression, “Were they looking for confirmation? …OK.”

With laboured satisfaction, LaFontaine relaxed, running their hands over their face and through their hair. Then they looked directly at Hadley.

“I decline your invitation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you recognise the name David Hadley PLEASE leave me a comment below. I long for contact with a JDC fan.


	9. Atlantic Inferred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LaF goes more than a bit Sherlockish. Alt-Carmilla is Natasha Negovanlis.
> 
> This chapter title is yet another Holmes reference. I never knew this fic had the potential for so many.

The door slammed open. Carmilla charged in.

“Why?!” Carmilla shouted, “Why would you refuse?”

LaFontaine was buried in calculation. Since the meeting with the UN agent that afternoon LaFontaine had been doing nothing else. A mountain of sheets with equations and results lay to their left side, the laptop running some insanely intense searching algorithm to their right. They didn’t hear.

Carmilla took a chair and turned to face LaFontaine.

“You had a perfect way out.” She said, “We’ve been fruitlessly researching this for so long, and now you’re offered the perfect way out! A chance at surviving! With other humans! Isn’t that all we wanted, just for one of us to live?”

LaFontaine looked up, exhausted from work.

“We were able to do that before, although not with other humans, which is probably your point. But we anticipated this offer, remember?”

Indeed, as LaFontaine made clear to Hadley, they and Carmilla did foresee this meeting.

Ever since finding out about the event from Orville’s data (and confirming) around three weeks ago, LaFontaine and Carmilla had been secretly researching potential solutions. As Carmilla said, their work was mostly fruitless. There were some promising ideas, but they all had one fatal catch that could not be resolved. The closest one was the simplest one: hiding in bunkers. It was so simple that all suitable bunkers, which LaF calculated to be only the most secure ones reserved for presidential figures, had to be taken by others. Moreover, as the world will inevitably find out about the news, millions of new, inadequate bunkers will be built in millions of desperate attempts to survive, causing international restrictions and occupying any sort of suitable geography. No, bunkers could not possibly work.

Rockets, on the other hand, could. To LaFontaine, there was nothing mysterious whatsoever about a rocket. They learnt about the whole thing in their various science and engineering degrees, even built a human-sized one for fun once. Whatever NASA can design, it’s a good bet that LaFontaine can too. However, LaFontaine’s knowledge was not the problem. Human knowledge was. Current technology simply can’t sustain a group of people in space for the majority of their lifespan. There is no way that a rocket, designed by LaFontaine and built by contracting out in six months, could come anywhere close to the minimum requirements: sustaining four people for twenty years. The sheer weight of all the supplies needed for that time defeats the plan.

Unsurprisingly, other alternatives closer to the domain of sci-fi adds nothing of help.

There was no way out.

And so they thought about this upcoming recruitment meeting. They had not received anything like a notice, but LaFontaine had deduced that at least one major organisation would try to recruit them, if not for help solving the problem, then for participation extending the human race. Since the news had not broken out in three weeks, it is only natural to deduce that someone had been warning people: governments, universities, observatories, amateur astronomers – really quite a lot of people – to keep quiet. And yet, for all the noise LaFontaine made getting tens of degrees in as many years, that same someone hadn’t contacted them yet. A meeting had to be in the books.

While they anticipated the meeting, they also anticipated LaFontaine saying yes. After all, if there’s no hope they all survive, at least LaFontaine could still live.

Yet, LaFontaine said no.

Carmilla could not understand.

LaFontaine took in a long breath.

“The news hasn’t come out yet?”

Carmilla shook her head.

“And no one on campus knows? Perry and Laura, they still don’t know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“OK…” LaFontaine expelled a long breath. Then:

“I had an idea this afternoon. Remember the multiverse thing I found?”

“Yeah…” Carmilla thought back, “I think so, it got buried under loads of other crap. Didn’t you say that it’s no use to us even if it’s true?”

“Yeah, yeah,” LaFontaine agreed, “I did say that. But that’s not the point, the point is that it made sense. It was a theoretically sound proof of the existence of the multiverse: there exist an infinite number of other parallel universes. I abandoned it because a physics proof is always not conclusive: it’s based on other theories which you are never certain of, so you need strong evidence. That evidence was not available. Also, if that proof stood, then the only way it can help us in any way is if we get access to another particular universe, say, escaping to one where the impact doesn’t happen, or isn’t nearly as strong, or, obtaining technology from one where science is advanced enough to eliminate the asteroid before it hits Earth. To access these universes though, we need to know exactly what we’re looking for. That is, we need a piece of exact information from that universe to act as a beacon. And the only way we can be sure of accessing the right universe is if we have the exact piece of information we require from that universe! So that’s a contradiction, and this could never be useful to us.”

“OK…” Carmilla nodded hesitantly, “So why bring it up now?”

“Because of this.” LaFontaine rummaged through the pile of calculations to their side, and produced an A4 piece of paper on which a photo was printed.

“This picture was on the very last page of the folder that the UN man handed me. This is a printout from a very accurate scan I made with that wristwatch camera we got for the meeting. Look carefully.”

“This is… Laura? And… You? Me? Perry? Who are these people?” Carmilla pointed to the three unknown characters on the page.

LaFontaine shrugged.

“No idea. But that’s not the point. Look closely.”

“I… I don’t unders…” Carmilla stammered, “Okay, so this picture is clearly photoshopped.”

“Exactly. But probably not in the way you thought it was.”

“Okay… Well, I have never met those three people before, so that’s pretty weird… Oh! All our faces are photoshopped to look better, especially this Asian guy behind me, you can see the strokes on his face. And our hair as well, they all look too perfect. It’s like it’s for some sort of show.”

“Exactly, exactly!” LaFontaine exclaimed, “Also, can you name that game that me and Laura are supposed to be playing?”

“No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.”

“Me too. If someone was conning me with that picture they wouldn’t have put in something I never saw, would they? The same thing with these people. One more thing: the game on the table, whatever it is, appears to be a two people game. Then why are there so many people in the photo? Or, rather, why have a two people game on the table for a picture with eight people? One answer that springs to mind is that the game simply acts as ‘something on the table’, in other words, filler. Deduction: the photo is for show.

“Look at the lighting. The photo is taken from about the height of Perry’s forehead, and her hair partially blocks the lit chandelier in the next room. Yet everyone receives good lighting despite a major light source being directly behind them. So there must be an equally good light source in this room, which appears to be the main room. Now, if the room next to the main room has a grand chandelier, them the main room must have one as well, yes? But the chandelier is nowhere to be seen in this photo, despite the camera catching most of the chandelier in the other room in what’s essentially a level line. Notice that even though the majority of the light is focused on the right side, the left side is reasonably well-illuminated too. This either means that, since a chandelier is almost always hung in the centre of the room, the photographer could still back off about three more paces before hitting the wall, which, judging by the missing chair back from Laura’s armchair, and the general fullness of the photo, the photographer would be very unprofessional not to take, contradicting their apparent capabilities in photoshopping; or, the light was not provided by a chandelier, in which case the picture has to be for show, where the chandelier in the background is decorative and the supposed one in this main room is never shown to the audience at all.

“Also, doesn’t it seem to you that all the clothes fit their characters too well? I mean, look at Laura, her owl sweater pretty much shouts innocence; your non-descript grey shirt and your expression; me and Perry both wearing nighties suggesting a romantic relationship, even though we haven’t taken that step, even though I’m supposed to be playing this game with Laura. Most importantly, and I’m surprised you haven’t spotted this yet…”

“Oh yes,” Carmilla looked at her own left hand, smiling, “me and Laura are not wearing our engagement rings.”

LaFontaine smiled as well.

“Still, how does this help?”

“I admit, when you only see this much, all you can think of is ‘hey, I never did that, this photo makes absolutely no sense’. But add that to the multiverse thing I just told you about, and look at this written here…”

They pointed to the hurried writing in the top right corner of _“MUCAR???”._

“Mucar?” Carmilla pondered, “MUCAR. M.U.C.A.R. MU CAR…”

“Multiple Universe.” LaFontaine said, “Carmilla.”

Carmilla looked shocked.

“I can understand the multiple universe part, but… Why have my name there?”

LaFontaine shrugged.

“Well, since the photo is probably from an alternate universe where our life is some kind of show, I can only guess that whoever got this photo from there saw that the title of the show is _Carmilla_.”

“What? Why me?”

“I guess a love story is more interesting than a pseudo-intelligent geek.” LaFontaine smiled.

“Um… You said we need access to a universe with better technology or with no asteroid. How does a universe where we’re fictionalised into film change anything for us?”

“Well, it doesn’t really. Not in that sense. The only contribution it makes to my plan is that it gives me a good story. When I realised what this picture meant, I came to the same problem, but then I thought: how could I make this useful? Then something struck me. Something so outlandish, something so against your instinct, something that would qualify me to a mental asylum for conceiving of it, and to the death roll for carrying it out. But it might just work. And it’s the best plan we’ve got. And for this plan, I don’t need an alternate universe, I just need our rocket, and a really good story. And none of us are writers. So I put in the scanned coding for this picture to my laptop, and ran an algorithm I wrote according to that paper on multiple universes, to extract relevant information about that picture from the universe the picture is from…”

“Um, sorry, not following you there.”

“Don't you see, Carmilla? Don’t you see that this doesn’t just give the four of us twenty years in a tiny rocket? Don't you see that it lets us live life to the fullest, in an actual world?”

“In an actual… But I thought you said we can’t escape to another universe! I…”

The laptop beeped. A window jumped out from the algorithm. A video started playing. A familiar voice filled the room.

“Silas University in picturesque Styria, where nothing, not even the homecoming goat sacrifice disturbs the pursuit of knowledge—”


	10. Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killing some people.

**_We could live forever and suffer._ **

**_Die as one together as lovers._ **

— You’re right, this… this is the right thing. I’ll help you, just… Laura. Don’t let me see her after you…

**_Love will be cruel to who it entices._ **

 

— Hey, LaF! New fridge?

— Oh, hi, Perr. No, that’s a refrigeration unit from the lab. It’s getting too messy there, so I moved it here for a while. Hope you don’t mind?

— Not at all! I mean, it’s in your half room. Hey, what’s this your laptop’s running again?

— Oh, that? Rocket structural test. Aerospace project.

— Cool!

 

— Er, mad scientist? Got you that fridge. You have names from that web lesbian vampire thingy?

— Why yes, web lesbian vampire. Here’s the list of names and info about the characters and where to find them. And it’s mad engineer, scientists do a totally different thing.

— Yeah, sure… Okay, so Kirsch, Theo, Mel…

— According to the webseries, those people, Danny and us four are all that live till the end. Other characters I’ll simulate. Hey, you don’t have a black older sister called Mattie do you?

— No, why?

— Hm, then I guess “JP” probably doesn't exist either. Probably Vordenberg as well for that ma…

— Wait, this says Sherman Hollis? Isn’t that…

— Laura’s dad, yeah.

**_Love will have its sacrifices._ **

 

**_Offer up your daughters, daughters._ **

— Hi, Mr Hollis, my name is LaFontaine, I’m your daughter’s friend at university?

— Oh hi, LaFontaine. Yes, Laura’s told me a lot about you. Come on in, com…

Thud.

**_The new moon comes shining through stone walls,_ **

— Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god… Calm yourself, LaF, calm… OK, knife. Calm… Calm… Oh my god…

**_To darken lightened rooms._ **

— Oh, Carmilla… I, can’t, can’t do this…

— You know you have to, LaF, you must. This is your plan, remember? Sherman Hollis had to die. For all of us. For Perry, and you, and Laura, and himself.

— Alright, yes, you’re right… Sherman Hollis needed to die… I had to kill him…

**_To darken lightened rooms._ **

— Hey Carm, you think dad will show up at your graduation?

— Why would he? He’s your dad, not mine.

— Soon enough he will be!

**_Love will be cruel to who it entices._ **

**_Love will have its sacrifices._ **

 

— I’m pretty sure Perry’s out… Yeah, she’s in the library writing her paper. Come on.

— Alright, what’s the code for the fridge again?

— 019483. Let’s hurry before permanent damage. Second storage level, set it at 5. Careful with that oxygen and electrolyte unit.

— Same code to lock?

— Uh-huh.

— Done. Okay, so that was that Kirsch, and Danny.

— Yeah… It was…

— Hey, LaF, you gotta stop beating yourself up over these arbitrary boundaries. This is your plan, remember? And what we’re doing is moral and right, we’ve talked about this before.

— Yeah. Too many times. I know what I thought and what I feel. I know I must not give in to these emotions. I’m trying my best. So let’s move on from those… Um…

— What’s the word on the rocket?

— Um… the rocket is… um… under assembly in Mexico, and waiting for a last component from New Zealand. Should finish just in time. Supplies are on the ocean right now from Japan.

— Will there be time for double-checking construction?

— No, I’ll have to monitor their progress live, which means we must hurry with… People.

— Okay, so who’s next?

— Mel, then Theo. Then I’ll go to your dorm room for Laura while you go get Perry to hurry back.

— Okay, let’s go.

 

**_There’s no way for you to fight this._ **

— Oh, hi, LaF. Long time no see.

— Even though we live on the same floor. Weird, huh? Listen, Laura, can I come in?

**_No spell for you to right this._ **

— Hey, LaF? You wanted me? Carmilla said you lost your phone…

— LaF? You home? Where are you?

**_No way for you to hide_ **

— Here, Perr… Here.

— Are you alright? You sound disturbed.

**_from the demon of the light._ **

— Yeah, I’m OK. Just take another step forward.

— Oh, um… Sure. You really okay?

— Yeah, Perr. I’m fine… Just a little bit closer…

— Okay… Where…

**_Love will be cruel to who it entices._ **

— I love you, Perry.

**_Love will have its sacrifices._ **

With futile desperation, LaFontaine drove the point of the needle deep into the back of Perry’s neck.


	11. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See title.

And so the day came.

As LaFontaine and Carmilla lay flat in the ascending spacecraft over Mexico, the day came.

As the asteroid 10296, Inanna, crashed into the Earth, landing near the EU headquarters in Brussels.

After months more designing, calculating, simulating, programming, testing, astronaut training, psychological training, calculating again, simulating again, checking, double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking… LaFontaine and Carmilla got on the plane to Mexico utterly exhausted.

As LaFontaine daydreamed again and again, thinking of the gruesome future that awaits them. Thinking of what lays ahead, the work still to be done. The time spent in utter solitude. As they daydreamed, they wondered what of them would be left after all that time. Would they still be able to speak? Would they be capable of forming relationships? Would they remember one single thing from the past, from now? Would they know what a human looks like? Even with all precautions, the odds of staying sane are infinitesimal.

The rocket contains supplies for one person for fifteen years.

How I envy Carmilla. She gets to die.

And I get to face the universe.

Never had LaFontaine hated science so. It reveals truth and explains beauty, it enables history and allows for civilisations, it holds the door and lock and key to knowledge, they knew all of that, and only because they knew all of it did they hate science so. It pushes you into reality. Incomprehensibly complex, uncompromisingly difficult reality. Why can’t reality, for once, be wizards and fairies? Why does every solution to every problem, this problem, need SO MUCH? Why am I the only one to do it?

I designed and built a rocket and a spaceship in six months. What takes entire countries decades to do, I did in six months. Yet this is only a speck compared to what is still to be done. On that spaceship. In space. By myself. Year after year.

There are these times when you just want to scream every ounce of your strength into the universe, and drift with your meaningless shell left behind.

But that doesn’t change anything. When you wake from this drift, when you grow intolerant of your worries and fears, you still have to stand up.

You do not know how to face it, but you have nowhere to go.

There will be many times when LaFontaine will find suicide tempting, but glancing to their side always stops the thought mid-track. There is yet heaven.

You still have to stand up.

 

As the day approached, humanity finally burst with news.

The first few days, not much happened. As news stations spent hours and hours covering the same issue, hosts and astronomers alike assuring the audience that this really is the end, governments and armies issuing emergency protocols, curfews and wartime laws left and right, nothing changed. People went to work, came back to eat, went out to pubs, saw movies, held parties.

The entire human race had defiance written on its face. A stubborn teeth-grind that punched and maddened whenever the idea was thought of. People, mid-conversation, would stop and stare intensely at each other until the idea subsided. Crowds, after dark, spontaneously formed in cities and countries alike, silently marching itself towards army posts and formations, and simply stood there until they backed down, before marching through and dispersing into their usual night lives, all without one single line of comment or discussion. Movie theatres no longer showed apocalypse films. Alien invasion and superheros were also taken off the screen globally as if in unanimity. Parties raged around the world. Religions, except for what few nutcases, universally proclaimed that god, or somebody, would surely not condemn the planet to this final fate. I won’t listen, it doesn’t exist. The whole Earth buried its head in the sand.

Until it just erupted.

Shops were robbed. Guns stolen. Hospitals suddenly emptied, the capable escaping, and the incapable killing themselves. Businesses closed, clubs and bars occupied by party goers who now partied till death. People either quit their jobs or simply stopped going, they went onto the street to stock up or for the last hurrah, only to discover that inside every shop was an armed brute, and outside every club was a pile of blood. People headed home for one last reunion, only to be stuck on roads that no longer functioned. Thousand-mile traffic jams, dotted by robberies and carjacks, were commonplace throughout the world. People walked, relying on satellites and mobile phone networks that were no longer properly maintained, out of the route, into traps. Conflicts, murders, rapes. Millions of bunkers started to be built. Millions of bunker-building companies formed, with their chief engineer/technician having done nothing more than tree-chopping.

Power production dimmed as more and more workers simply gave up. Domestic electricity was cut out, as was petrol, food and clean water. Rations were handed out from designated spots as what was left of governments and armies tried desperately to control the situation, massive forces swept across cities to gather wanderers before identifying and cataloguing them to be delivered back to shelters or their homes. Armed guards stood on each street and every corner, practically inviting assault before marshalling forces that would wipe out the attackers. The world was ending.

Meanwhile, at Silas, a group of mercenaries known as Corvae, by request of the board of governors, took control. As they sent whomever they could back home and locked down the campus to whomever remained, they conducted a thorough search looking for some missing persons: Professor Arnold Orville, Susan LaFontaine, Melanippe Callis, Danny Lawerence, Theo Straka, Wilson Kirsch, Carmilla Karnstein, Lola Perry, and Laura Hollis.

It was fruitless. Despite having looked through every corner of every building and all known secret entrances and exits, neither their persons nor bodies were found. And, as the final days approached, both the university board and the Corvae group started breaking down. They dispersed, walking and running aimlessly, spreading throughout the city.

On the last day, they found them.

Under the basements of the Lustig building, the head of the board of governors happened upon a newly-dug crater during her meaningless wanderings. Flipping over the tarpaulin cover, she stared into the disfigured faces of the decomposing bodies of Laura, Perry, Danny, Kirsch, Mel and Theo.

As the end came.

 

One month later, as the spaceship stabilised in its final orbit, LaFontaine killed Carmilla.


	12. The (Other) Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other end.

That was ten years ago.

All that, ten years ago.

Perry, Carmilla, Laura, Danny, Orville. Silas. The human race. Ten years ago.

Amid typing, LaFontaine lifted a hand and felt their hollow eye socket.

A lot happened during these ten years.

Or, if you like, nothing happened.

Day after day, the motions were repetitive, the routine mechanical. They woke, they worked, they ate, they exercised, they slept. Daily checks on ship status, weekly checks on ration supplies, quarterly checks on Earth conditions, all of this LaFontaine performed meticulously. The action was all in the work itself. Even with LaFontaine’s talent and post-doctoral knowledge, developing an entirely new and complete theory of neuroelectronics and engineering in ten years is still incredible progress, not to mention incorporating it into known neurological and computing sciences, designing and building a fully-functional device that integrates with an array of pre-existing computer processers and neurological systems. This work, which would otherwise have taken the entire human race more than fifty years, took LaFontaine ten.

This kind of progress comes at a price. Ten years later, almost no trace of the previous LaFontaine remained. The new LaFontaine was horrifying to look at. Ghostly white, completely bald, with a harrowingly empty eye socket, acne and scars all over their face and body. Muscle and bone atrophy have rendered their body weak and frail, radiation unfiltered by the atmosphere causing several cancers, and prolonged increased intracranial pressure and constant work robbing them of their left eye. Death was waiting just around the corner.

Psychologically, LaFontaine has not changed as much. However, if not for the web series, which they had to often consult during later stages of the work, they probably would have not have remembered who Perry, or Carmilla, or Laura was. The research, the designing, the goal was all that was on LaFontaine’s mind for the entire decade. As it was, despite being a scientist and engineer, they often forgot that those were actors portraying roles, and embraced Kaitlyn Alexander, who does not even exist in LaFontaine’s universe, as their earlier self, and similarly, Briggs, Negovanlis and Bauman. LaFontaine got no real rest, there was no time to catch their breath, they had simply no space in their head to think of these actors as separate human beings.

That is, until the completion of all machinery, and they would watch the entire alternate story of Laura’s group on their laptop in preparation for the final coding task: the construction of the world according to Hollis, when they could finally sit back and wonder about the characters instead of the people, the actors instead of the characters.

Kaitlyn Alexander is not of this world.

…

 

Final check complete, LaFontaine stopped typing.

That was it.

My work is done.

LaFontaine looked to their right, where, in a clear coffin-shaped container, the body of Carmilla Karnstein lay, wires and plugs extending from her body, recently thawed. Beside her, there were four vats filled with clear liquid, each of which can be seen to contain a disembodied brain. The vats, clearly recently thawed as well, were marked LH, LP, DL, MC, TS, WK. The wires from the coffin and vats all led to a terminal connecting to a large black box flashing with blue and green lights, raggedly tagged “JP”. One more wire came emerging from the machine, leading back to where LaFontaine was, a similar coffin slightly to their left, empty.

These coffins and vats, whose designs Carmilla stole from the UN, suspended the body’s metabolism while supporting the brain’s full function. LaFontaine’s later work on the spaceship connected it to signals sent from an electronic source, replacing real stimuli from the body. The brain sees what the signals tell it to, and sends impulses back out to control the body. This goes to the computer, which, using LaFontaine’s algorithm, generates responding signals into the brain as if the event took place in real life. The Matrix.

As this is a computer simulation, the fundamental rules of this world can be set to be whatever the creator likes, in this case, the LaFontaine-modified version of the fictional Silas of the web-series, where vampires, anglerfish gods, and giants called Bob are just as real as formless souls, blood-sucking swords, and lawless campuses.

With other electronic impulses, certain memories and worldviews can be inserted or deleted from hosts, certain abilities suppressed, certain knowledge given and extracted.

An auto-pilot had been turned on to keep the ship in orbit, while avoiding other objects. The conscious-less AI programmed by LaFontaine to refer to itself as “JP” was in charge of this system as well as the Matrix.

LaFontaine pressed the Enter key.

A countdown showed on the screen.

They stepped into their coffin, lay down, and firmly closed the lid.

As the plugs sprang to life around them, and the countdown slowly approached zero, with a fading consciousness, LaFontaine drifted into their last thought:

How about that. I’m God.


	13. Carmilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Actual Beginning

Headache. The strength of which made Susan LaFontaine reach up to their forehead to check for a lightning scar.

It died down almost as quickly as it came on, as if there was a blinding white light that flashed and went away.

No, LaFontaine noted, there _was_ a blinding white light that flashed and went away.

The hand that went for the forehead instead arrived at the left eye. Something felt weird.

There is an eye there. How can that be weird?

“Kaitlyn.” LaFontaine burst.

“Huh?”

LaFontaine looked to their left.

“Perry!”

LaFontaine jumped to wrap her in the hardest embrace, out of reasons neither understood.

Perry’s head was filled with question marks as well. She felt like she’d suddenly woken from an endless nightmare that seemed more real than life, yet did not understand why this was. She felt a jolt of lightning, and suddenly discovered herself in this dorm room with LaF. What was going on –

Headache. Splitting headache as memories flooded her mind, drowning the previous feelings of doubt and dread.

“Hey,” LaFontaine spoke, “Do you feel… weird, at all?”

“A little,” Perry replied, “It’s nothing, probably just not enough sleep. Being the floor don is not easy, you know.”

LaFontaine raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” Perry added, “Neither is being the ‘unofficial truth-speaker’, I guess.”

LaFontaine smiled. An electronic cracking sound came from next door, then speech, drowned by the wall.

“I hear ‘Silas University’, and ‘picturesque Styria’, ” said LaFontaine, “I guess next door’s finally got her mic working. What’s her name again…?”

“Laura.” Said the floor don, “Laura Hollis, does journalism.”

“Yes, yes…”

A flash of flesh and glitter, a dancing gait, a tall blonde girl walked past the dorm window.

“Hey Perry, isn’t that Laura’s roommate?”

“Uh… Yeah, yeah I think so, Betty.”

“Um, I know we’re not supposed to judge, but don’t you think she parties a little too much?”


	14. Wizards and Fairies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Live together as lovers.

A kiss.

Giggles.

A look back at the surprisingly long distance from the pit out of which the pair had just emerged.

Another kiss.

A look ahead to the city, the dawn, and the bright, bright futur…

There’s two people sitting on a big rock in front of us.

“LaF! Perry! How…?”

“Well, it may surprise you to know that you get tired kinda quickly when you’ve had your eye taken out and/or been possessed by a god.” LaFontaine took a breath, “I got some painkillers where I got my bandage. More importantly, Laura Hollis, just how the hell are you alive again? Did Carmilla’s what essentially amounts to praying actually work?”

Carmilla frowned.

“Y… yeah, pretty much. Although when you put it like that it sounds like it shouldn’t have.”

LaFontaine shrugged.

“Also…” with some effort and a little of Perry’s support, LaFontaine stood up from the rock, and placed a hand on Carmilla’s neck, “I notice your breathing is a bit different… Is that a pulse?”

Carmilla said, amid confused gazes: “It was mother. She wanted to relieve me of suffering when she was sure Laura was dead.”

“Oh!” LaFontaine was positively gleeful, “Remind me to give you a full body examination sometime. Ex-vampiric bodily processes should definitely be an eye opener – I mean… Yeah, EYE opener.”

A little laughter rang through the group.

“Perry?” Laura’s voice was shaky. She approached Lola Perry, who was still barefoot, and dressed in that gown.

Shaky nods. Embrace.

“Hey, listen, guys, I’m gonna check me and Perry into the nearest hospital straightaway. And I’m gonna tear down the building if they don’t give us adjacent beds. Please take a break from all the honeymooning and canoodling and visit us once in a while…” Holding Perry’s hand, LaFontaine started to walk away. “Oh and Laura! Thanks for saving the world.”

Waved goodbyes.

As they disappeared from sight, Laura looked to Carmilla again.

When it was the end of the world, when I had died, when our love was doomed, I had wanted to go to Paris. But then all was well, all was saved, the end never came, and now… Paris seemed a little far away. Just a little far away.

Her eyes are so beautiful.

…

“So what now?”

Laura Hollis asked, as they looked ahead to the city, the dawn, and the bright, bright future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Thanks for tolerating me until the end. I'm deeply jealous of anyone that can use language to convey emotions and build characters, not to mention romance and sex. As it is, my writing will probably be always like this: puzzles with characters eternally out of wack as you conceive them, with a bit of controversial (but correct) morals  & shallow discussion thrown in.  
> This particular one was born out of the ending of Carmilla Season 3, and a burning need in me needing a bit of candy after Laura & Carmilla's walk out from the pit. Interesting how this fic ended about a minute after the credits. Another thing I wanted to incorporate was to explain the absurdity of the show, toward which I have mixed feelings. As an engineer I can't intuitively tolerate most "easy" depictions of science. My problem.  
> I may or may not write more stuff in English. If you happen to understand Mandarin & want to see something of varying shallowness & slightly less ineptitude in language, I have a LOFTER page on which I'm posing various Doctor Who fics and my own stuff. I sound distinctly translaty and BeiJingish in Chinese. 塞门·张


End file.
